Conventional parking brakes of the above intimated type require relatively long levers to achieve the necessary torque to sufficiently tension the wire. This is because conventionally designed systems do not have the possibility to optimally take up slack in the wire which is always present to a greater or lesser degree in such wire systems. The slack in the wire must be taken up before it is possible to utilize a greater force ratio. On taking up wire in conventional systems, the wire is wound onto a quadrant, whereby the attachment point follows the rotation of the lever and the wire is wound onto the quadrant. The shape of the quadrant contributes to a great extent to the force ratio in the system. It is quite possible to shape it such that an optimal force ratio from a force point of view can be used, but this would imply that the system would be very sensitive to slack in the wire and yielding in the system. The problem with today's systems is that, to ensure that the system does not stop working when the degree of slack increases, a more advantageous force ratio for the wire path must be used, which implies that the required application force will be high. This, in turn, contributes to the size of the lever.
For conventional parking brake systems, it is therefore sometimes necessary to adjust the slack in the wire. The presence of wire slack which has to be taken up by the rotation of the lever thus means that a certain adjusted angular position of the lever does not always correspond to the same wire force. Because relatively large levers are required for conventional parking brake systems, the brake lever dominates the driver's area. The required size also means that it is difficult to place the lever in an ergonomically advantageous position in the car.